13 Dec Inventory Tips for Successful 2018

It’s That Time of Year!

Love it or hate it, conducting inventory is essential to running a profitable business. While your year-end inventory is at the forefront of your mind, now is the perfect time to think about what steps you’re taking to manage your inventory throughout the year. Many successful retailers choose to conduct periodic inventories in order to keep a tighter watch on their store’s stock. Limiting your inventory taking to just once a year can lead to the possibility of inaccurate information accumulating over 12 months, making it much more difficult to judge the health of your business. Choosing one small section at a time and tackling a few sections each month can generate a long list of benefits for your store. Using BUYiQ’s inventory mode can simplify these spot-check inventories, making easier for you and your staff to reap the benefits of accurate inventory.

Benefits of Spot-Check Inventory

#1 – Protect Your Margins
Margin control is critical to a store’s profitability. Conducting spot-check inventories can help to ensure that the margins you set when initially receiving the product stay where they need to be. Once a spot-check inventory count has been done, the finished inventory file can be exported from MyGeniusCentral and imported into your POS to adjust quantities. Some retailers choose to also set this process to adjust wholesale pricing in their POS. Examining margin reports after adjusting wholesale pricing could reveal a missed wholesale price change that caused your margin on a particular item to be out of whack. Making these margin adjustments can ensure that you are maximizing your profit on any given item, throughout its time on the shelf. Continuous inventory management helps to ensure your margins are where they need to be.

#2 – Monitor Shrink
Shrinkage can make a very unwelcome dent in your store’s profits. Typically caused by theft, receiving errors or unsellable product (expired or damaged goods), conducting periodic inventory can help you keep a close eye on shrink issues. For example, when scanning items for inventory purposes, you can quickly check for expiration dates. Those items that are short-dated can be priced for quick sale to avoid loss. You can also spot items you suspect were removed due to theft. Those items can be remerchandised in a more visible area or placed behind the counter to prevent future theft. Scanning accurate inventory to adjust your on-hand quantities can also fix any receiving mistakes and keep your inventory clean and correct.

#3 – Improve POS Data
Doing spot-check inventories can help you ensure your point-of-sale data is accurate. This is particularly important for retailers that use their point-of-sale to create orders. If your quantities on hand are incorrect, you’re more likely to order less than ideal quantities to keep out-of-stock and overstock issues at bay. Some retailers use an automatic replenishment feature in their POS. While these computer assisted orders can save buyers a lot of time by automatically creating purchase orders based on product movement (as recorded by their point-of-sale), if the recorded inventory levels are inaccurate, the generated PO will be inaccurate as well. When using an automatic replenishment feature in your POS, your orders will only be as good as your inventory accuracy.

Don’t let inventory get you down! Let BUYiQ help you conduct your spot-check inventories and start seeing the benefits today. Do you have BUYiQ but aren’t familiar with using it for inventory? Click here for details and instructions! Not a BUYiQ customer? Fill out the information to the right and a sales representative will contact you shortly. For more assistance or if you have additional questions, please contact our Customer Service team at 1-800-360-2231.